The Birth of Bourne
by enigma939
Summary: Novel-verse. Pre-series. The story of how a man called David Webb, forever scarred by the shadow of war, was transformed into the lethal killer who eventually came to be known as Jason Bourne.
1. Chapter 1: A Saintly Rescue

**The Birth of Bourne**

**Chapter 1: A Saintly Rescue**

_In his dreams he was back by the river. Back by the house. His family was swimming in the Mekong. His wife and children. Dao, Joshua and Alyssa. It was all so peaceful, so safe, so secure, so...happy._

_And then it would happen again, as it had happened so many times before in his mind, but only once in the darkest realm of reality. For it _could _happen only once in reality. Death could rain down from the skies and claim its victims only once. After that there remained only blankness, a void...an oblivion in which the scene would replay itself over and over again until the mind would numb and the body would fail and the memories would...vanish._

_Till then, he would have to hear the rattle of guns and see the bloodied bodies floating in the river and smell the stench of death..._

"Hey babyface, time to fucking WAKE UP!" the loud crude voice came crashing through his ears and his consciousness.

With a nearly inaudible groan, his face dripping with beer from the tumbler that his head had overturned when it collapsed onto the bar counter, David Webb pulled himself up, or at least made a feeble attempt to. He was helped in this endeavour, not gently to be certain, by powerful hairy and muscular arms belonging to a repulsive bearded face that had suddenly filled his entire line of vision. The eyes were red, and the breathe stank of acute alcoholism, but the man, the beast before him was a hardened 'veteran' alcoholic, certainly by no means a novice, unlike the shattered man before him.

David rubbed his forehead and his eyes. Both were aching, along with the rest of his body. His head was throbbing with excruciating pain of the sort that was indescribable to all but those who had experienced it for themselves. His mind on the other hand was...blank.

He tried to marshal his resources, gather his faculties (whatever was left of them at any rate) and recall who he was, and perhaps more pertinent to the current situation, _where _he was.

The latter question seemed fairly simple to answer. He was in a bar somewhere in one of the seedier districts of Saigon, he couldn't precisely remember where or when. Nor could he remember how many tumblers of beer had he consumed since his arrival. Five? Six? More?

As for the first question, he didn't know and somehow, he didn't seem to care...

"What did I tell you, Burt" said the bearded man to the grizzled barman behind the counter. "This motherfucker can't take it. Shoulda' chucked him out after the first one. He don't look like he can get over his mornin' glass of freakin' orange juice to me!"

David, still trying to wipe the dizziness from his eyes, glanced at his reflection in the faded, cracked mirror on the other side of the bar. It was a face he couldn't recognise...the face of a drowning man. It wasn't him.

"One more", he muttered softly. Then, remembering what country he was in, he repeated himself in Vietnamese.

"Hey I'm a Yank, man. I don't speak that kinda horseshit. I leave it to the slants and the Vee-Bee's", the barman said.

"Hey for all you know, this spaz could be one of them Vee-Bee tramps!" the bearded man said.

"I don't know, Jeff. He sure looks Yankee to me", replied the barman, curiously peering at the very-drunk Webb.

"I said one MORE", David half-shouted, rummaging in the pockets of his torn pants for money, and shoving several hundreds in US dollars into the barman's hands without seeming to notice.

"Hey man, Jeff's right! You don't look like you can take any more", the barman said. "Now take your cash like a good boy and go home".

"Yeah, crawl back into the shitcan you climbed out of, asshole", a third occupant of the bar, a clean-shaven muscular blond man in his early twenties wearing a US Army uniform said, right before he downed down a glass of Scotch.

"Piss off", David muttered under his breath.

"Hey, what DID you say, asshole?!" the bearded man, Jeff, shouted, grabbing Webb by the collar of his shirt with one arm, while balling his other hand into a fist. "Looks like I'm gonna have to redecorate that pretty face of yours".

"Yeah, by the time he's done with you, there ain't gonna be no girl who'd so much as _spit _on you!" the blond private jeered. "You ain't seen Jeff here in action. He can sure be one mean son of a bitch! By the time he's done, even the slut you got back home on a retainer ain't gonna want nothing to do with you".

Whether it was the blond man's overbearing attitude or the insult to Dao that lit the fuse, David didn't know. All he knew was that in the next instant, he was on his feet, weakly trying to maintain his erect posture. "Take that back", he said, trying desperately to make his voice sound at least remotely menacing, but failing horribly in the attempt.

"Oh, will you get a load of this guys! Babyface here is gonna take on the Tiger! Or die tryin' anyways" said Jeff.

Three other occupants of the bar, one of them also dressed in a US Army uniform, had joined the two men in the centre of the bar, towards which Webb had taken a few hesitating steps, while struggling to stay on his feet.

And then David struck the first blow. In his mind it was powerful and decisive, in reality it was not. The feeble punch barely pushed the blond soldier a few paces back. "All right buster", the 'Tiger' muttered. "You asked for it".

In a sudden move, the solider delivered a vicious chop to Webb's throat. Even before Webb reached the ground, he was kicked in the ribs by a booted foot.

"Take _that_, asshole!" said the soldier, but the other intoxicated patrons of the bar clearly weren't prepared to let the matter rest. At a time when war had engulfed their surroundings, they clearly weren't hesitant to seek their own sources of conflict, no matter how trivial it may be. War was a way of life for such men; violence was second nature, if not first.

And so it went on for ten minutes. Ten minutes which felt like ten hours for a living corpse called David Webb, who after the first two minutes, felt not the blows that were repeatedly struck all over his body by a tangle of arms and legs moving in tandem. Kicks, chops and punches seemed to strike with a seemingly rhythmic efficiency and the world around him collapsed, as it had before. And before long, he was back in the oblivion where he could hear the rattle of guns and the fires of devastation...and finally the rattle became a shot. One single gunshot.

The five men stepped away from their handiwork on the floor, their attention momentarily diverted by a figure in the doorway; a tall brown-haired man with a gun, a Beretta automatic, in his right hand, aimed collectively at all of them. His warning shot had shattered one of the glasses on a shelf in the other side of the bar.

"Step away from him", the authoritative voice that issued from the man's mouth said. "Slowly...make a single move and your brains are all over the floor before you can breathe...got it!"

"Who the fucking hell are you man?" the bearded Jeff shouted, evidently outraged until a second shot that missed him by a few inches subdued him.

"Oh well, if it ain't Saint Alex, the Langley spook!" said the blond 'Tiger', suddenly recognising the figure in the doorway, who now slowly walked into the bar, approaching the semi-conscious and drunken wreck of a man on the floor.

"You got that right, bastard", Alexander Conklin replied.

"Come to save your baby-faced buddy, have you?" asked the other soldier.

"Yeah, and you should know by now that I don't mind blowing apart your baby-brains in the process either" snapped Conklin. "All of you, to the other side of the bar. NOW!" he commanded, firing a third shot into the floor near them. The now frightened men hurriedly stepped back, as far away from the gunman and his friend on the floor as possible.

Conklin bent down, grabbed the now unconscious Webb by the collar, lifted him up to his shoulder length, and half carried, half dragged him out of the bar with his left hand, his right hand still steadily gripping the automatic until they had both exited the bar.

The faint light of dawn gradually stole over Saigon. Across the city ravaged, much like the world around it, by war, people were rising, men and women prepared to begin yet another day's work in contribution towards either peace or war, the latter becoming a likelier option with each passing day.

And David Webb yet again felt blows on his face. But these blows came nowhere close to matching the impact of those he had already endured, both physically and mentally. As his hazel eyes, blue in the sunlight, opened, he stared at the familiar face above him.

"Alex?" he said softly, trying to raise himself into an upright position.

"Easy now", the CIA field officer and strategist, and a friend of David Webb's from the embassy in Phnom Penh said, as he helped his friend raise his head from the seat of the park bench where it had lain since the two had arrived there nearly three quarters of an hour before.

"Where are we?" David asked, after taking a few minutes to look around and compose himself.

"We're in Saigon, David. A park a few blocks away from the Embassy, where we will be going in a short while to have the doctors have a look at you. I managed to stop the bleeding but a few of those bruises looked quite nasty. But I thought it'd be better if I made you snap out of it first. Don't think it will do your rep any good if I bring you in looking like some drunk tramp", Conklin said.

"What happened?" David said, struggling to shield his eyes from the glare of sunlight that had suddenly descended upon him.

"You were drunk, David. You were drunk and on the floor, getting the crap beaten out of you by a couple of juiced-up punks. You're damn lucky I happened to be passing through", Conklin replied.

"Thank you, Alex", Webb said.

"On top of that you gave our people in Phnom Penh quite a scare when you went AWOL earlier this week. The whole embassy went into a panic, our field men scattered all over the city looking for you...either you or a corpse. Even _suicide _wasn't ruled out. Hell, if I wasn't tied up here in Saigon, I would have flown down there myself to take charge, but then I happened to be going through Immigration records one day and just _happened _to come across your name. I knew it would be only a matter of time before I brought you in", Conklin continued.

"Brought me in for what?" David asked weakly, wincing as he suddenly felt a jolt of pain shoot through his left arm.

"You need help, David", Conklin said gently, yet firmly.

"Oh these..." David gestured towards his bruised and beaten body, "...just minor cuts and bruises, I'm sure they'll..."

"I'm not talking about your body, David. The doctors can patch you up in no time. I'm talking about your head. To be more specific, your _mind_", Conklin said emphatically. "When I saw you after the funeral, two weeks back, I knew you simply weren't yourself. Hell, you could barely hold the shovel when you needed to bury the coffins and you nearly broke down on seeing the bodies before the coffins closed...you looked like a dead man, David. A corpse. There just wasn't any life, any _light _in your eyes. Your section head suggested therapy, but you rejected that option. You just wanted to be left alone. We left you alone. And since then, you spent every day by the river, just staring into the water sometimes, screaming your lungs out at others. People were getting worried. Some even said you were a candidate for the psychiatric ward. And then you disappear...and show up in Saigon, roaming streets where no sane man would roam, drinking yourself to an early grave, getting into beer brawls you can't possibly win..."

"I couldn't help myself Alex. That...bastard...he insulted Dao", David whispered softly.

"I can understand, David", Alex said softly. "But consider the odds. It was you, a drunken wreck, against five men, all of them stronger than you, at least two of them with combat training. You couldn't possibly have survived, circumstances being what they were..."

"Dammit, Alex", David suddenly shouted. "This isn't one of your stupid 'situations' in the 'field' spook. This is about my wife. Her honour is all that's left of her".

"I'm sorry", Alex said, deeply affected. After an awkward silence of a few minutes, he continued, "But you really need to pull yourself together. You need help. We have people here, or we could even have you shipped back to the States. There's this really good shrink I've heard off in Washington called Panov. He's done wonders for some of our soldier-boys and field ops. He can help you. We can't afford to have our best Foreign Service officer in the region out of commission for much longer..."

"I'm never going back, Alex" Webb said, with firmness in his voice that was missing mere minutes ago.

"David!" Conklin exclaimed.

"No I'm serious. I've realised now how _futile _the whole thing, this whole goddamn diplomatic _charade _is. We sit around conference tables; have meetings, discussions, _talks_, statements and so on and so forth but none of it does a damn to change the fact that people are _dying _out there Alex. I've seen it with my own eyes now. It's not the people with the fancy suits and limos with their diplomatic small-talk who can help now. It's the men with the guns who play by the enemy's rules", David said.

"But that doesn't do anything to change _you_, David, does it? You're _not _one of those men with guns".

"Goddamn it, I WANT TO BE!" David suddenly shouted, rising from the bench unsteadily, and turning on Conklin. "Give me a fucking gun and I'd gladly blow my head off, but I'd feel a bit better if I blew off some of _their _heads first!"

"You can't really mean that, David", Conklin said.

"They _killed _them, Alex. My wife and children. They slaughtered them. From the skies. Those filthy Red bastards _murdered _them. And God help me, I want to play by their rules", David said in a half-demanding, half-pleading tone. "That's why I came to this rotten country anyway. I wanted to find them and kill them. Or die trying. Don't you see, I _have _to kill them. I have to! It's the only way the images and the sounds will ever go away. I have to _kill _the bastards!"

"Well there's a lot of that going on around here", Alex muttered dryly, remembering at that moment that he was expected back at the embassy later that day to analyse some of the latest intel one of G-2's moles had smuggled in from the North.

"You need to help me Alex. Just give me a gun or two and parachute me or something into the North. I'll do the rest. I'll take out as many of the bastards as I can before they take me out. You need to make that happen!"

Conklin was about to open his mouth to suggest yet again that David definitely _did_ need a psychiatrist, and he needed one ASAP, when an idea suddenly struck his mind. And after all, he thought, after this brainwave had flashed across his head, why not give it a try? The Monk always was lamenting the absence of any 'intellectuals' in the program.

He took a deep breath and said, in a somewhat changed tone, "Tell you what. Forget the shrinks for today. I'll take you over to my place and send a doctor, an old friend of mine, to look you over. After that you need to rest for a while". He paused momentarily, as though unsure to continue, and then added, "Tomorrow, or maybe the day after, whenever you feel better, I'll take you to meet someone".

"Who?" David asked, now curious.

"A priest", Conklin said with an ironic smile. "Though not the kind you're thinking".


	2. Chapter 2: The Monk

**The Birth of Bourne**

**Chapter 2: The Silent Monk of Covert Operations**

The next afternoon, well over thirty six hours after their conversation in the park, David Webb and Alexander Conklin walked into the US Embassy in Saigon. David arms and legs were covered in bandages concealed under his clothes and the smell of iodine emanated from his face where it had been used to sterilise the more superficial wounds. After a bath, a shave and a change of clothes provided by Alex, David looked like a completely different man from the one who was nearly beaten to death in a bar two nights ago, though in truth, he was no different deep down inside.

The two men took the elevator to the fourth floor of the embassy after which Conklin led David down a long hallway on either side of which were doors labelled with the names of their occupants. At the end of the hallway was a door which was simply labelled 'Storeroom. Access Restricted'. Conklin reached into his pocket for a key, and inserted it into the lock on the door. The door swung upon and the two men entered a darkened room, just as it automatically swung shut ten seconds later. "Special mechanism", Alex said.

They were in what appeared to be a small storeroom with a small hole high above in the wall being the only source of light, and a feeble one at that. Conklin however twisted the second hook on the wall at the back of the storeroom, among three, in a counter-clockwise direction and then twisted it back into its original position. There was the sound of a click and a large section of the wall swung inwards. A bewildered Webb followed the intelligence officer inside before the hidden door swung back in place again.

"What is this place?" Webb asked as he looked around at the fairly well-lit large room, which was in fact an office. The walls were covered with filing cabinets and in the centre were two desks, both covered with two red telephones each and several files and papers. One of the two desks was occupied by a late middle-aged man, in his mid to late fifties, with prematurely grey hair, pale skin and brilliant blue eyes, dressed in an expensive business suit.

David recognised the man, though he couldn't quite place a name to the face. He was sure he had met the man before somewhere, presumably during an embassy dinner. The man didn't in the least look surprised at their presence. He instead walked towards Conklin and shook hands with him.

"Good for you to see us on such short notice, David", Conklin said to the older man.

He then turned towards Webb. "This is David Abbott. I'm sure you've heard of him".

"Oh. Of course. Pleased to meet you, sir", David said as he shook hands with the man whom he remembered was one of the finest officers the State Department had ever produced in the last twenty years, a multilingual and highly perceptive graduate of Oxford, Cambridge and some of the finest finishing schools on both sides of the Atlantic.

"I seem to recall meeting you. An embassy dinner in Phnom Penh I think. Your name is...Webb isn't it. David Webb", Abbott said.

"Yes sir", replied Webb.

"Ah yes, of course. I remember, you were at that dinner with that charming Thai wife of yours", said Abbott.

At the mention of his wife, David's face darkened. A tense silence followed which was interrupted with Conklin clearing his throat and stating in a neutral tone, "Regretfully, Mrs. Webb passed away almost a fortnight ago in Phnom Penh".

"Oh. I am _so _sorry", Abbott said. The expression on his prematurely lined face conveyed genuine sympathy. "I seem to recall now...what was it? A North Vietnamese bomber...a vicious attack by the Mekong River. Our men are still investigating that. We're sure it was one of theirs?"

"Hanoi disclaimed it. But we know what those lying bastards are like", Conklin said vehemently.

"Ah well, the costs of war", Abbott sighed. He then turned to Webb. "Oh forgive me Mr. Webb if I seem insensitive but when you've lived with war for most of your life in some form or the other, you do develop a sense of clinical detachment towards death".

"Mr. Abbott here", Conklin explained to Webb, "has been involved with Intelligence since the days of the OSS. He's a veteran of the Agency and currently a full-time consultant to the State Department's clandestine division".

"Naturally none of this is common knowledge", Abbott said.

"Mr. Abbott is also known within the intelligence community as the 'Silent Monk of Covert Operations'", Conklin continued.

"Oh come now, Alex", Abbott chuckled. "I always thought that a ridiculous nickname".

"Nevertheless, its true", said Conklin.

"Well, what can I do for you?" Abbott asked, although his manner conveyed that he already had at least some prior idea of which way this meeting was heading. David assumed it had something to do with the long telephone calls Alex had gone out to a phone booth across the street to make the previous night.

Conklin cleared his throat for the second time. "David here wanted me to give him a couple of guns and drop him into North Vietnamese territory so that he could take out a couple of Reds. Personally I feel the best place for him is therapy, but since he's pretty adamant..." The sentence was completed unspoken by a private look between the two men. Webb sensed that the two men were silently agreeing on something, some secret that was between them. Finally, Abbott turned towards him and spoke.

"You are serious about this, David, aren't you? I can call you David can I?"

"Yes sir" Webb replied. "On _both _counts".

Abbott sighed. He then walked over to his desk and sat down and waved David to another chair in front of his. Conklin remained standing.

"What I am about to tell you is Above Top Secret. Only five men in this entire building right now, including Alex and me, and less than a hundred men alive know even a fragment of what I'm about to share with you. I know your credentials. You're a galaxy apart from the sort of people we usually recruit. But seeing that desperate look on your face, and knowing what Alex just reminded me off, I feel that you deserve to know this. Deserve to know at least that you have a choice. Not one which most civilised men would want to make. But a choice nonetheless. An outlet, if you prefer", Abbott said.

A greatly intrigued Webb stared straight into Abbott's blue eyes and said in a low monotone, "Tell me".

Abbott sighed. "Alright. But what I tell you doesn't leave this room under any circumstances. Understand?"

"Perfectly", replied David.

"Very well", Abbott began. "Three years ago, the State Department, in cooperation with Pentagon, Naval Intelligence and the CIA, began a unique and highly unconventional initiative codenamed 'Medusa'. Unconventional not only in terms of its activities, but also its personnel, most of who are drawn from the 'dregs of society' as it were".

"Sounds intriguing", Webb said. "Tell me more".

"Medusa is essentially a program to train agents in the planning and execution of a wide variety of grey to black military and intelligence operations, from counter-espionage, to search and destroy, guerrilla warfare, infiltration and even assassination", Abbott said. "It is a program which would be almost universally condemned among the civilized world, including many of the most powerful men in Washington, if its existence were widely known, which fortunately it isn't. Our recruits are drawn from a wide pool, both in terms of nationality and experience. We recruit highly experienced officers from all branches of our own military, as well as those of Allied nations, French, British and even Australian citizens and South Vietnamese volunteers. We recruit soldiers, smugglers, mercenaries, civilians...anyone who either has a personal stake in the war or who can be bought and who is willing to risk his life in order to take other lives", Abbott paused and then continued.

"In the last twenty eight months since we've been in operation, we have done reasonably well. Medusa operatives has caused more damage to North Vietnamese tribal groups and military forces than all the search and destroy missions put together by every other branch of _any _military force present in the region. But the search for fresh talent, for greater expertise for _intellectual _input, continues..."

"How many languages can you speak, Mr. Webb?" Abbott asked suddenly.

"I can speak French, Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese quite well enough, the latter two in various dialects". David replied.

"Ah yes, that can be quite valuable", Abbott said. "One of the primary difficulties we encounter with our Occidental recruits are their relative inability to speak the language, with the exception of a select few. This can prove to be quite a hindrance in intelligence gathering".

"The language issue is always a problem", Conklin added. "It's how I got into the game. Too few people could speak Russian fluently back when I joined the Agency".

"It isn't a game" Webb said softly.

"Of course it isn't" Abbott agreed, "But Alex and I have regretfully spent so many years in this shadow world that we are often in risk of forgetting that. Until a tragedy such as yours reminds us of why we do this." He paused and added, "It's a war, David and the only fair war is one in which both sides play by the same rules. Till today, the other side has routinely flouted those unwritten, unspoken 'rules of engagement' without any retaliation. That has to end, and it will end."

"And I will get to kill the bastards?" David asked.

"Yes, you will. We will teach you to kill and we will _send _you to kill and expect you to as well. You will be well compensated for these 'assignments' naturally, and will be entitled to all due benefits and privileges of ranking military and intelligence officers. Your identity will be protected as well, if you wish".

In his mind's eye, David could see and hear, as he had seen and heard so many times before, the rattling of guns and the bodies in the river. And blood. Blood everywhere. But where there was darkness and the silence of death before, there was light. The light of his own fires, the sound of his own gun and the blood of his enemies. His enemies, the killers of his wife and children. The pain would go away for it would become _their _pain. He would make them hut. By Christ, he would make them hurt!

"Sign me up", he said softly.

Conklin began to speak, "David, wait...maybe you need some time to think this through..."

"No Alex, this is _precisely _what I need", David said as he turned towards Abbott. "When can I begin?"

"In about three weeks", Abbott said. "But I must warn you about the decision you have decided to make. Not the _physical _risks of course, I can see that you're quite prepared to accept those. But there are other risks. _Psychological _ones. No man we have ever trained, have ever sent into the field, has returned unchanged. We will transform you into a lethal killing machine, we will guarantee you your vengeance and even your safety, if your skill permits it, but we cannot guarantee that you will ever be able to return to being _who _you were before. What you will see, what you will _do_, will completely turn you into a different person. A year from now, you may not even remember who you were today. Are you ready to accept that?"  
"Yes", David said without the slightest hesitation. "Being who I am today is something I want to get rid off as soon as possible".

"It's settled then", Abbott said softly. "I'll tell Crawford you're on your way".


End file.
